1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a material handling device, and more particularly, to a cargo handling truck bed.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Manually moving and removing materials, such as boxes from truck beds, particularly from trailer beds, is time consuming. Material moving devices, such as single conveyors, have been developed to assist in moving materials from the truck beds. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,760,971, which is hereby incorporated by reference. Alternatively, rollers (either driven or undriven) have been utilized to roll the material from the truck bed.
A problem with the prior art conveyors is that all of the material or cargo, say boxes, must be moved simultaneously by the conveyor. In some instances, when only a portion of the cargo must be delivered, all of the cargo may have to be removed from the trailer and then the undelivered portion must be returned to the trailer.
To overcome this problem, the prior art roller arrangement has been modified to provide two separately driven roller sections extending along the length of the truck bed. The two sections of rollers are independently driven by separate chain and sprocket arrangements. The driven roller arrangement is expensive to manufacture and maintain due to the number of parts required, namely, rollers, chains and sprockets. Further, an inherent flaw of the driven roller arrangement is that cargo, such as boxes, may roll in the trailer bed when the rollers are not being driven and the trailer bed is inclined. This can pose a safety problem when unloading the trailer bed.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a two-sectioned cargo handling truck bed that utilizes less parts than the prior art driven roller arrangement.